E 458 
.3 

.C56 
Copy 1 



DISCOURSE 



THE ASPECTS OF THE WAE, 



DELIVEKKD IN 



Ei)c Kntrtana-piace Cfjatpel, Boston, 



E'ast Day, Apbil 2, 1863. 



BY JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE. 



lublisfjjli t)g Request. 



BOSTON: 

WALKER, WISE, AND COMPANY.. 

No. 245, Washington Street. 

1863. 



DISCOURSE 



THE ASPECTS OE THE WAE, 



DELIVERED IN 



Efje Int(tana-piace Cfjapcl, Boston, 



Fast Day, April 2, 1863. 



BY JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE. 



lubltsfjeli 6g l^equest. 



BOSTON: 

WALKEE, WISE, AND COMPANY, 

No. 245, Washinoton Street. 

1863. 






BOSTON: 
PRINTED BY PRENTISS AND DELAND, 

40, Congress Street. 



ERRATA. 

Page 18, line 17, for "secure," read "remove." 
Page 2G, line 8, dele the word " almost." 



DISCOURSE. 



Jer. vi. 14 : " They have healed the hurt op the daughter of my people slightly, 
SATING, Peace, peace, when there is no peace." 

Ezek. xiii. 10-15: "They have seduced my people, saying. Peace, and there was no 
peace; and one built up a wall, and — LO, others daubed it with untempered 
MORTAR ! Therefore, thus saith the Lord : There shall be an overflowing shower 

and great hailstones and a stormy wind ; so WILL I BREAK DOWN THE WALL, AND 
BRING IT TO THE GROUND, THAT THE FOUNDATION MAY BE DISCOVERED. So WILL I 
ACCOMPLISH MY WRATH UPON THE WALL, AND ON THOSE WHO HAVE DAUBED IT WITH 
UNTEMPERED MORTAR ; THAT IS, THE PROPHETS WHO SEE VISIONS OF PEACE WHEN THERE 
IS NO PEACE." 



TT7E live in a great historic period. What we 
call history occupies but a small part of the 
centuries of time, or of the existence of the human 
race. Nations, civilized and uncivilized, have ten 
years or fifty years of annals to one year of history. 
Lists of kings, wars of robbery, the records of 
luxury, wealth, and outward well-being, do not make 
history — they only make annals. It is with nations 
as with plants, or with men — long periods of growth 
alternate with short hours of blossom-bearing and 
fruit-bearing — months of development with days of 
crisis. 

During the long months of spring, mid storms and 
sunshine, the buds slowly swell on the trees ; gently 
they unfold their little leaves, and shake them out 



timidly upon the harsh, inhospitable air; then as 
the spring melts towards summer, the blossom-buds 
expand, till one morning we rise, and lo ! summer 
has come. The apple-trees are all white with their 
snowy blossoms — the air is fragrant with theu' deli- 
cate perfume. We have reached a crisis of concen- 
trated life. Then, after a few days, the blossoms are 
gone — the fruit begins to swell slowly through other 
long months of silent growth — at last comes another 
crisis, — yesterday we tasted the fruit and it was 
sour — today the sun, before we were up, gave the 
last mysterious touch with his magnetic rays, and the 
juices are now sweet, — and the children this after- 
noon may climb the trees to gather the apples, their 
rosy cheeks shining by the side of the rosy fruit — a 
picture for Teniers. Here is another crisis — the 
days of blossom and of ripe fruit are the history of 
the apple-tree, — > all the rest only its annals. 

Or, look at your own life ! How small a part of 
it is history — how large a part of it only story. 
Outward events, with no informing idea, no corre- 
sponding inward crisis. There was a day, — you 
remember it well, — when you asked yourself the 
question, — What am I ? What am I here for "? 
Who sent me 1 What can I do with myself in the 
world 1 On that day you came to self-consciousness. 
It was a crisis in your life. Your history began on 
that day. Before that day you existed ; after that 
day you lived. You became a free being at that 



time, — assuming self-direction, self-restraint, self- 
control. Before, you had floated on the current, or 
drifted with the tide ; now you hoist the sail, take 
the helm, look at the compass, and set sail beneath 
the dewy stars and the recurring suniise, over the 
violet ocean to some far-off island of the blest, some 
divine distant home. 

There was another day of crisis, when you knew 
what it was to love. You found yourself caring 
more for another than for yourself, — going out of 
your own life into that of another, finding a divine joy 
in adoring the beauty of another, following her with 
your thought, and feeding your life daily out of hers. 
This also was history. Those days may have long 
passed by. Perhaps you are a gray-headed man, 
known on change as a hard and keen man of 
business ; no mortal suspects you of such a thing as 
sentiment. And yet, I will venture to say, there is 
somewhere among your papers, in some locked 
drawer of your bureau, a little faded packet of notes 5 
with a withered flower which you cannot bear to 
throw away, — for it marks that critical jDeriod when 
you were all alive with an idea — when you were rapt 
away out of yourself into a seventh heaven. You 
were foolish as you could be, no doubt, — but — well, 
It was life; and you can never forget it. 

So nations have long periods of annals, brief 
periods of history. The history of a nation is the 
time when it is filled with an idea, and when its life 



6 



proceeds, self-directed, from that, and not from the 
instmct which seeks mere material pleasiu'e, comfort, 
luxury. When a nation is inspired by the idea of 
patriotism, or of religion, or of freedom, it makes 
history fast. When it subsides from these ideas into 
a routine of mere growth, it only makes annals. 
Wars, waged for an idea, even a false one, — like 
those of Alexander to carry Hellenic civilization into 
Asia ; or the Crusades to carry the cross back to 
Palestine, and plant it above the crescent on the walls of 
Jerusalem, and the tomb of Jesus ; or the Reformation 
and its wars ; or the religious movements which have 
stirred the life of a people — the Revival of Thought 
in such ages as that of Elizabeth of England, Louis 
XIV., or the constellation of genius surrounding the 
Duke of Saxe Weimar in his little court ; or great 
struggles for independence and freedom, as in the days 
of the English Commonwealth, or the American 
and French Revolutions ; these days, when a nation is 
warmed through and through by the enthusiasm of 
an idea, — these days make its history. 

And now we, in America, have suddenly come 
upon such a period, and we all feel ourselves lifted 
a little above ourselves, by its power. As, when the 
tide rises in your harbor, it lifts, not only the great 
man-of-war and the steamship, but also every little 
skiff and the child's paper boat ; so, when an idea 
sweeps through a nation, all people, good and bad, 
wise and foohsh, old and young, great and narrow, 



for a time, at least, partake of it. All drink of the 
same spirit. When the news came to us, flashed 
along a hundred electric wires, of the attack on Fort 
Sumter, every man, woman, and child in the country, 
felt the thrill of patriotism. Many a man was 
astonished at himself, and said, " I did not know I 
had any patriotism. I did not know that I cared 
anythmg for the old flag. I did not know I felt so 
about the Union. Thank God, that I can care so 
much for anythmg." 

This is something to be thankful for, — that we 
live in such a great historic time ; that we have seen 
a phenomenon which occurs not more than once in 
five hundred years, — the "uprising of a great people;" 
and that we ourselves have partaken of this wonderful 
impulse. This has been to the nation what the Day 
of Pentecost was to the Christian Church, an out- 
pouring of a spirit, which for the time dissolved all 
parties, reconciled all antagonisms, and made all men 
speak and hear the same language, — Parthians, 
Modes, Elamites, dwellers in Mesopotamia, Republi- 
cans, Democrats, old-fashioned Whigs, Pro-slavery 
men and Anti-slavery, Tariff" and Free-trade, — all, 
for a time, spoke one language, heard the same 
words. That, also, is somethmg to have seen ! People 
go from America to E-ome to see the ceremonies of 
this week, m which the events of the Lord's Passion 
are celebrated with all the pompous ritual of the 
CathoHc Church. It is impressive to see the great 



floor of St. Peters covered with a standing congrega- 
tion of fifty thousand persons witnessing the celebra- 
tion of mass ; or to see twelve thousand soldiers in 
the great square kneel at once on the pavement to 
receive the papal blessing. But what is that to the 
sight we have seen here, of a whole nation kneeling 
and giving itself up, its wealth, its liberty, the lives 
of its children, before the commanding presence of 
an idea — the idea of "Oiu' Country." And as that 
heavenly effusion of the spirit produced in the church 
correspondmg fruits, so it has been with us. What 
have we not lived to see of devoted action t 

We have seen, first of all, young men, our sons, 
the ripe fruit of the best culture of the best race of 
mankind going cheerfully forth, animated by a sense 
of duty, to live or to die in this cause. Not merely 
those who went as officers, but the privates of our 
army have shared fully this sphit. No doubt there 
are exceptions, but the spirit of the nation has been 
one of unexampled devotion. Europe never knew 
anything like it, and refused to believe it. The South 
could not believe it. It had looked on us as a race of 
cowards ; and it had some reason to think so, since 
we had, in past time, compromised and conceded, one 
by one, nearly all the principles of manly indepen- 
dence. If w^e had resisted the aggressions of the 
South twenty years ago, we should not have been 
obliged to resist now. But the South expected no 
war, no resistance of any consequence, and bitter has 



9 



been its disappointment. The old blood of the land 
has shown itself as rich as ever in aU heroic effort 
and sacrifice. No need, hereafter, for orators to go 
to Greece or Rome, to Marathon or Platsea, to find 
examples of grand heroism and martyrdom with which 
to round their classic periods. Go to Baltimore, 
and the passage of the Sixth Massachusetts through 
that mob-accursed city. Go to Ball's Bluff, and the 
Massachusetts Fifteenth and Twentieth standmg, hour 
after hour, to be shot down because some one had 
blundered. 

"Theirs not to reason why, 
Theirs not to make reply, 
Theirs but to do and die." 

Go to Hilton Head, and the magnificent exploit of 
our fleet sailing steadily round and roimd its calm 
curve of victory, till it had beaten to atoms the rebel 
batteries. Go to the Mississippi, and the passing of 
the forts and capture of New Orleans, and the 
Varuna going down, fh'ing her deck guns, till they 
touched the water, and sinking a hostile vessel while 
she was sinking herself. Go to Hampton Roads, and 
that memorable day which abolished in a moment the 
wooden fleet of England and France, and see the 
Cumberland going down with its flag flying, and firing 
its batteries to the last. And what shall I say more, 
for the time would fail me to tell of all the noble 
deeds of our young heroes, down to this last splendid 
cavalry charge at Kelley's Ford. 



10 



Some twenty years ago, a physician who visited the 
Massachusetts General Hospital, used to take with 
him his little boy, three or four years old. A lady, 
whose husband was at the head of the estabhshment, 
endeavored to make the little fellow feel at home 
by trying to amuse him. But he was very timid 
and diffident; so much so, that when she brought 
a rocking-horse for him, he was afraid to sit on it, and 
would not ride on it unless held upon the horse by 
the lady. That boy was one of the leaders in the 
recent cavalry charge and combat — said to have been 
the finest ever made on the continent. That boy, 
twenty years ago, afraid to sit on a rocking-horse, 
dashed at full speed into the hostile squadrons, and 
when surrounded by superior numbers, defended 
himself gallantly till his horse was shot, and then 
refused to surrender. Our Boston boys have not lost 
the spirit of theh* fathers. Wealth has not made 
them effeminately self-indulgent, study and mental 
cultiu-e has not made them incapable of energetic 
action. 

And the mothers of these young men, — I go 
to the house of one whose noble child has been 
struck down in battle. I go m fear, expecting to 
meet too much anguish, and almost too great a call 
on my sympathy. I find her hapjDy, calm, thankful 
to God that he has given her such an opportunity of 
sacrifice for the land. This is the usual state of 
mind of the mothers of our young soldiers. There 



11 



is nothing of false excitement about it; it is the 
natural state of mind of those who have conscien- 
tiously and devotedly offered to God, to Truth, to 
Humanity, their best beloved child. They gave and 
it is given to them again, full measure, pressed down 
and running over. They gave a son; they receive 
back from God a saint and a hero. 

Then look at the spirit of generosity and devotion 
which this war has called out at home. Look at the 
voluntary contributions, which seem to be more free 
and generous the longer the war goes on. I have 
had occasion, in my time, to collect money for various 
purposes ; and I never saw anything so easy as to 
obtain money now. When I went to beg, formerly, 
I generally prepared myself beforehand to hear no 
three times to every yes, and to have people look at 
me, as though I were begging for myself. Now, on 
the other hand, I have yes said to me three times 
for one no. And, indeed, they sometimes beg of 
me to come. Only last week I was getting some con- 
tributions for the freed negroes in the South-west, 
who are in great want, and suffering for clothes and 
provisions now ; and I was asked to come to one 
business place, and each of the partners handed me, 
without a word, fifty dollars, so that I went away 
with a generous contribution to the fund given at that 
one place without my asking for it. People get into 
a habit of giving, and it becomes easy. 



12 



One of the most striking aspects of the war is, 
that it comes as a Judgment, and is full of God's 
judgments. It is not well, I know, to interpret the 
ways of God very freely, or rashly to call siiifermg 
judgment. The whole book of Job is a warnmg 
against that. Job's friends came to him in his woe, 
and said to him that his sufferings were judgments on 
him for his sins, and that he ought accordingly to 
repent of his sins. He replied that he did not see 
how he had sinned, so as to deserve these judgments 
more than other people. They said " He must have 
sinned in some terrible way, because he suffered so 
terribly." But they were told in the end that they 
were wi'ong and that Job was right. His sufferings 
were not judgments, but trial and discipline. So, 
too, Jesus rebukes the tendency to call suffering judg- 
ment, when his disciples wished to know about the 
man born blind : " Did this man sin, or his parents % " 
"NMien, then, may we say that God has sent judgments \ 
I think we may do so when we see that there is 
a law of God at work, by which a man has sowed sin 
and reaped pimishment ; that a nation has sowed the 
^vind and reaped the whirlwind. Judgments make 
the necessary connection between sin and its conse- 
quences ; long deferred, perhaps, but sui'e to come at 
last, and when thev come, invohins: often the inno- 
cent with the guilty, visiting the sins of the parents 
upon the children, to the third and fourth generation. 

In the Bible we see a great many judgments on the 



13 



Israelites and on the Egyptians, on David and on 
Pharaoh. But though these are represented as direct 
and immediate acts of God, it does not follow that 
they did not come also by divine laws. God's acts 
are never arbitrary. In the Bible we see the law on 
its supernatural side, in its sense, and in its meaning. 
The Bible merely shows the inner side and spiritual 
side of natural laws. The Bible, therefore, is like a 
watch with a transparent face, in which we can see 
the inner movements, and main-spring which tui'ns 
the hands. 

Now m this war we may see a divine judgment, 
because it is evil working out its natural results. We, 
as a nation, established ourselves on the principles of 
the Declaration of Independence, and declared that 
" aU men were born equal, and endowed with an 
inalienable right to life and liberty." Meantime we 
held slaves, and took no measures, as a nation, to 
abolish slavery. Here was war abeady ; a latent war, 
indeed, but none the less real ; war between the 
national idea and the national conduct ; between the 
national institution, on the one side, and the national 
convictions on the other. Now, in such a war, one of 
two thmgs must come, — the institution must give way 
to the convictions, or the convictions to the institution. 
Failing this, the inner war must at last terminate in an 
outward struggle, in outward war. God's judgments 
are in bringmg to light the things of darkness, and 



14 



making manifest the man of sin hidden away in the 
secret consciousness. 

Judgment brings evil to light, and, by bringing 
it to light, prepares the way for repentance and 
reformation. When the consequences of an evil 
principle appear, men are ready to see the wrong of 
it, and repent of it. And to repent is the fii'st step 
in any effectual progress. The Apostle Paul, you 
will remember, says in one of his Epistles, that his 
readers must not suppose, even from his former letter, 
that the coming of Christ and his day of triumph 
was near. It cannot come, he adds, till the " Man of 
Sm " is revealed. This " Man of Sin " he describes 
as an evil principle of spiritual and ecclesiastical 
ambition, at that time latent in the church, — a secret 
poison. It must come out, he says, and be seen and 
understood and judged by the truth, and condemned 
and repented of before the day of Christ can come. 
Just so we needed this judgment to bring out and 
expose the inner conflict m this nation, between its 
principles and its institutions. 

Therefore, for seventy years has been this inward 
war, this hidden conflict in the heart of the nation, 
between the idea of Liberty and Equality which 
make the nation's soul, and this outward institution 
from which the North and South got their gain, by 
which they were growing rich and richer day by day. 
We had seventy years given us by God, in any part 
of which we might have prevented this war by 



15 



removing its cause. But three generations have 
refused to do it. The Revohitionary fathers said, 
" We have done enough in gaining independence for 
the nation. Let our children put away slavery when 
they choose ! " Their children of the next generation 
said, " Time enough by and by. Slavery is a very 
wrong and bad thing, we know, but by and by it will 
be easier to abolish it. By and by it can be done, or 
will come to an end of itself." The thhd generation 
arrived, and found slavery the source of great and 
growing wealth and power to the nation, and said, 
" No ! we will not touch it." The South said, " Our 
fathers were mistaken when they said slavery was 
wrong. Slavery is not wrong ; it is right. Call all 
oiu' doctors of divinity, and let them prove it to be so 
out of the Bible. Call our ethnologists and anatomists, 
and let them prove it right from the negro's skull 
and shin-bone. Call our moralists and let them 
show that it is right, because it makes the slave 
happy." So at the call of the cotton lords, they came 
and did their work. And so the whole South was 
united and agreed not to abolish, but to maintain 
and extend slavery ; and to secede from the Union, 
or at least threaten to secede, if they were not 
allowed to do it. 

On the other hand, at the North the people also 
finding themselves growing prosperous and powerful 
by means of this institution, said, " Let it alone. It 
is nothing to us. Am I my brother's keeper? Why 



16 



exclude slavery from the territories? It cannot go 
there. They are too wet, or too dry, or too moun- 
tainous, or too much of a prairie. The laws of God 
exclude it. Why re-enact them? We are not 
responsible. We have nothing to do with it. Put 
down the abolitionists and freesoilers, and let us have 
peace." 

Peace, — peace, — which was no peace. "Daub 
the wall "svith untempered mortar, and make it look 
like a good wall. The frost below is sapping it, the 
stream beneath steadily undermining it ; but when 
the cracks begin to appear, put on a little mortar, 
and make it look like a good wall. It will last our 
day — after us the deluge." Such has been northern 
statesmanship for the last thirty years. 

They tell this story of William Lloyd Garrison. 
He was riding, one day, several years ago, in the cars ; 
somewhere in Western New York. A Southerner in 
the car was told that Garrison was present, and said, 
" I should like to talk with him." So he said, " Mr. 
Garrison, I wonder how you can expect to succeed. 
Look at the facts. The more you preach abolition, 
the more it does not come. The slave power is much 
stronger now than it was when you began. You 
cannot unite the North against slavery, and you have 
united the South in its defence. See the facts. We 
have done every thing we wished to do. We have 
annexed Texas, bought up the democratic party at 
the North, silenced and defeated the whigs, got a pro- 



IT 



slavery congress, a pro-slavery executive, a pro- 
slavery judiciary. These are the facts," Mr. Garri- 
son. " Yes ! but one fact you have omitted in your 
estimate." "What is that?" said the other. Garri- 
son replied, ^^ The fact of the existence of God" The 
Southerner, with the frankness which often belongs 
to him, threw up his hands, and said, " Well, by 
heaven, we do sometimes forget that, I think." 

Meantime the idea, the conviction on which the 
nation was founded, did not die. It was awake and 
at work. It could not be put down by mobs. It 
could not be argued down by doctors of divinity 
referring to the curse of Noah, and Paul's Epistle to 
Philemon. 

It could not be destroyed by the compromises of 
false-hearted poHticians, only eager for power, — who 
were ready to sell out their anti-slavery convictions 
to the highest bidder. The anti-slavery conviction of 
the country was deserted by its leaders, — it lost its 
great men ; but it went on and on and on. This was 
" the irrepressible conflict." 

People say that the anti-slavery men were the cause 
of this war. That is perfectly true, in a certain 
sense. If there had been no anti-slavery, there would 
have been no war. The war could have been pre- 
vented in two ways : One way might have been by 
resisting the increase of slavery, — shutting it out 
of new States ; throwing the whole influence of the 
Federal Government against it ; and so, by degrees. 



18 



killing it out. If that had been done, there would 
have been no war. 

Or, on the other hand, if the northern people, 
listening to the temptations of wealth, and the in- 
structions of pro-slavery ministers, had given up all 
belief in human freedom, had expunged the pream- 
ble of the Declaration of Independence, and allowed 
slavery to extend itself where it would, — into Mas- 
sachusetts, or anywhere else ; there would have 
been no war. In this sense, therefore, anti-slavery 
was the cause of the war. 

But here was the question you will observe. Here 
were two hostile and irreconcilable elements in the 
life of the nation, — an institution and a conviction, — 
the institution of slavery, and the conviction of free- 
dom. One or the other must be put down, or war 
would come. Now which was the easiest to Siecure ? ^ 
The mistake our great men made was to think that 
it would be easier to crush a conviction than abol- 
ish an institution. That was a mistake ; and I 
attribute the present war to the men who made that 
mistake, who thought that they could more easily 
destroy an idea in the soul of man, than abolish 
the institution of slavery. In 1850, under the lead 
of Daniel Webster, the great men of the land, after 
much hesitation, and after trying to be on both sides, 
finally saw that they must choose. They saw the 
approaching danger of war. They saw dissolution 
of the Union approaching. So they finally decided, 



4, 'HAAA.^f^^ 



19 



though reluctantly, that it would be more easy to 
uproot the conviction of liberty than the institution of 
slavery ; and they set themselves deliberately to work, 
to induce the North to " conquer its prejudices." 

At first it seemed almost as if they were right. 
There was an alliance between the two great parties 
to put down all anti-slavery discussion in church and 
state. A minister who spoke against slavery was 
to be turned out of his pulpit ; no rising, ambitious 
politician was to be encouraged, who was not willing 
to be quiet. For a time the compromises seemed all 
well. The wall, daubed with untempered mortar, 
seemed a very good, solid wall. They merely forgot 
one thing, — '■'- the fact of the existence of God."" 

God is more on the side of his ideas than of our 
institutions. When he sends an idea into the world 
he stands by it. It would have been a hard piece 
of work, no doubt, to have uprooted slavery, however 
gradually. But if our great men had decided to do 
so, in a wise but thoroughly earnest way, it could 
have been done. But what they tried to do, — to 
put down the conviction of freedom hi the human 
soul, could not he done ; and hence this war is a 
judgment of God, — first, on slavery, which it smites 
with the thunderbolt of battle ; second, on slavehold- 
ers, whose pernicious sophisms and refuges of lies it 
will destroy forever ; and thu'dly, on all northern 
time-servers, self-seekers, and false teachers of mo- 
rality, who smote Christ in the house of his friends. 



20 



and tried to persuade the nation that gain -^as godli- 
ness. 

T think that God, in his providence, is now teach- 
ing us a great many things ; but among the rest, es- 
pecially this, — to repent of our treatment of the Afri- 
can. We have hated him because we have injured 
him. He belongs to an affectionate and moffensive 
race ; and I know of no other way to account for the 
hatred borne to him by so many, except that reason 
which the sagacious Roman historian assigned as a 
trait of human nature. 

And this hatred of the negro leads me to say 
something of another aspect of the war ; namely, the 
development of evil. It has brought out latent good, 
but latent evil also. Now I will say something of the 
last. 

Great historic hom's, like the present, are also, in 
this wa)', a day of judgment to communities and na- 
tions. As the poet truly says : — 

'• Soiuo grout OiUiso. God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight, 
I'iirts tho i^Oiits uiHMA the left hand, parts the sheep upon the right, 
And tho ohoioo jjoos by t'orerer, 'twixt that darkness and the light." 

This war, which has developed the noblest quaH- 
ties ill some, has also developed the basest in others. 
I do nor know anything more mean and diaboHcal 
than this — when there is a prejudice against any 
poor and weak cla&s, to make it ones business to 
oxnsperato and increase it — when a race is trampled 



21 



upon, to set one's heel upon it more heavily — when 
a people are poor and weak, and find it hard to get 
a lining by honest industry, in the face of a bitter 
prejudice, to make it harder, by circulating, greedily, 
all rumors against them, true or false. Now this 
unmitigated meanness, this consummate baseness is 
the systematic and persistent course of some of our 
newspapers. They think thus to please the poor 
Irish, I suppose, but I think that the Irish have a 
vein of generosity in them which will, sooner or later, 
make them despise such baseness. I do not know 
anything but a bad Yankee that is at once mean 
enough and cunning enough to do such things. The 
best thing, when corrupt, becomes the worst. " The 
sweetest wine," says the Italian proverb, " makes the 
sourest 'vinegar." * So the Yankee, also, when good 
and true, is the noblest of characters ; when he is 
bad, the meanest. And among mean Yankees the 
meanest of all is a pro-slavery Yankee, whether he 
be editor of a newspaper, a south-side doctor of 
divinity, an episcopal bishop, or a president of a 
New-Hampshire college. 

There always will be croakers, and they are very 
useful people. God not only has made the birds 
who welcome the comins: dav. in the soft auroral 
twihght, with a multitudmous chant of joy, — but he 
has also made the frogs who croak their sad com- 

* " n piu dolce vino fa il piu forte aceto." 



22 



plaints over the damp, departing night. It always 
has been so. People have croaked over every great 
advance of the human race. They croaked at the 
invention of printing — it took the bread out of the 
mouths of the copyists ; at the Reformation of 
Luther — it opened the way to a deluge of changes ; 
at the downfall of Paganismj* so many respectable 
augurs and haruspices were relieved of duty ; at 
the progress of Christianity — so few respectable 
people approved of it, — " not many wise or noble " 
being called. There are croakers now, also, who 
lament over the downfall of slavery, as though it 
were the very keystone of the State. One of these 
croaking gentlemen made a speech, the other day, in 
the Massachusetts Senate, in which, searching for the 
cause of the war, he found that in 1831, John Quincy 
Adams introduced several petitions for the abohtion of 
slavery in the District of Columbia, and our Massa- 
chusetts wise man says, " this act exasperated the 
South." Also he finds that in 1851, a coalition of 
democrats and freesoilers chose Charles Sumner to 
the Senate, and George S. Boutwell as governor; 
" and to this act, directly and indirectly," he adds, 
" and to these two gentlemen, more than to any other 
northern men is to be traced the present awful and 
deplorable condition of the country. It was they," he 
adds, " who succeeded in goading the South to open 
rebellion." The South was exasperated, and it seems 
justly, because we ci\illy asked that human slavery 



23 



might not exist in oiir own National Capitol. We 
ought not to have made them an^n". It was \erv 
wicked of the lamb to make the wolf ansiry. by 
drinking in the stream so near to him. It was ven- 
wicked in Elijah the prophet to trouble Israel, and 
exasperate King .Ihab by rebuking his sin. It was 
very wrong in Jeremiah to exasperate Kins: Zedekiah 
and the princes by not prophesying smooth things, and 
to make them wroth with him, so that they smote 
him and put him in prison. It was wrong in Xaboth 
to exasperate Jezebel by refusing to give up his vine- 
yard, and he was responsible for Jezebel's conduct in 
killing him. So. in the same way, it was wrong for 
Massachusetts to exasperate South Carolina by send- 
ing ]Mr. Hoar to give legal protection to Massachu- 
setts citizens, and to exasperate the chivalric sons of 
^lississippi by not asking then* leave before we 
elected Charles Sumner and Governor Boutwell. 
Thus croak a few frogs still in the damp places of 
the land. But that sort of croaking is a safety-valve 
to let out the pressm-e of their dissatisfaction. I look 
upon the Boston Courier as a kind of marsh which 
has been providentially provided for these people. 
where they can sit and croak to each other in a sort 
of frog concert of mutual condolence — and if it 
makes them happy, why not ? 

There is. however, a different class of men. and a 
much more dangerous class, who mean to carry 
practical opposition to the Government as far as they 



24 



dare. They mean to give aid and comfort to the 
rebels, so far as they can do it, salvd cervice, without 
too great elongation of their own necks. To this 
class belongs Mr. Salisbury, in the Senate of the 
United States, who calls Lincoln an imbecile, and 
draws a pistol on the sergeant-at-arms. To this class 
belong Seymour and Fernando Wood and James 
Brooks, in New York, and Vallandigham and others 
in other States. But all history shows that when, in 
time of war, men attack the Government in this way, 
they will lose their mfluence. The best men of their 
own party will refuse to follow them. Those men in 
England who opposed the war against Napoleon, 
though they were patriots, yet because they opposed 
the Government in time of war, fell into hopeless 
minority. Those men in Massachusetts, who op- 
posed the war of 1812, were politically killed from 
that hour. The instincts of the two nations said, 
"Whether the Government be right or wrong, it 
is at war, and we must support it. Else anarchy — 
else national ruin." It will always be so. All 
factious opposition to our Government in time of war 
will destroy itself. No harm vrill come to the nation 
from the efforts of unprincipled editors and politicians. 
I am glad they come out as they do. All loyal, 
honest democrats will spurn them with contempt — 
as Dickinson spui-ns them, as Wright spurns them, 
as Henderson and Noel of Missouri spurn them, as 



25 



Robert Dale Owen and Orestes Brownson spurn 
them, and as Benjamin F. Butler spurns them. 

But what is the prospect of success in this war ? 
Read Stille's pamphlet, and see. Stille, in his pam- 
phlet, called " How a Free People conduct a long 
War," has shown us, by the light of history, how we 
are to succeed. England, in the Peninsula war, began 
with a universal enthusiasm like ours in April, 1861. 
All parties united in voting large supplies, all parties 
expected overwhelming victories. But when Sir 
John Moore retreated to Corunna, and the French 
overran the Peninsula, the English gave up hope, 
and fell into an extreme of despondency. Still they 
persevered. When Wellington failed to take the 
French armies, they desponded again. But they 
persevered. And so at last, the French were driven 
from Spain, and defeated everywhere, not by great 
victories, but by the force of perseverance, which 
inspires a free people. 

How much we have done ! It is true that we 
have not found a Napoleon yet for a general ; 
nor a General Jackson, to put an iron will into 
the Executive Department. But a Napoleon is, 
fortunately, as rare as a Shakspeare. A great cap- 
tain, like Hannibal or Csesar or Frederick or Na- 
poleon, comes only once in five hundred or a 
thousand years. We had no right to expect any 
such. Well for us that none such has come. We 
have had able and loyal captains, but no great 



26 

military genius, who could, in all likelihood, have 
destroyed our republic and made himself its despot. 
Nations may well say of such : — 

" Curse on his genius — it 's undone his country." 

But meantime, without any splendid victories, we 
have been steadily advancing. We have done what 
no other nation on earth could have done. We have 
girdled the rebellion with an almost effective block- 
ade of three thousand miles extent. We have held 
every loyal State exempt from being the seat of war. 
We have taken, with an iron grasp, four slave States, 
Missouri, Maryland, Delaware, and Kentucky. We 
have taken half of Virginia and made a free State of 
it. We have emancipated the District of Columbia, 
and so killed disloyalty therein. We have occupied 
a large part of Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama, 
Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida, with our 
troops. We have nearly opened the Mississippi 
river. Finally, we have struck the rebellion the 
most damaging blow of all, and shaken the ground 
under its feet, by freeing so many of the slaves, and 
by threatening the whole slave system. Soon we 
shall have large bodies of negro troops organized on 
the lower Mississippi, to keep that which our armies 
and gunboats conquer. Soon we shall be holding 
Texas as a State to be colonized with free labor, and 
restored to the Union a free State, capable of raising 



27 



cotton enough for the whole world. Soon we shall 
have Missoim as a free State, slavery not being cut 
down by the sword of war, but taken up by the roots, 
by the free act of its own citizens. I am radical 
enough to prefer to see it thus taken up by the roots. 
When this is done, Maryland must follow, and Ken- 
tucky must follow Maryland, and we shall hope to see 
a great central tier of free States, voted free by the 
people themselves. In all these States the negroes 
will be hired by their old masters, and occupy their 
old homes, and demonstrate, after a little time, the 
inherent superiority of freedom over slavery. In 
twenty years after slavery is gone, Kentucky, Ten- 
nessee, North Carolina, and Virginia will blossom 
like the rose, and be the garden of the American 
continent, as well as the keystone of the American 
Union. 

Meantime, while we have been thus crushing the 
rebellion with our right hand, we have been holding 
England and France still with our left hand. The 
difficulties of our position were very great, and it re- 
quired consummate prudence, joined to a great dis- 
play of force, to prevent interference. We need not 
be surprised at the hostility of England toward us 
which culminated in the Trent affair, but which has 
since been growing less and less, till now England 
may be said to be really on our side. Three great in- 
fluences impelled England to desire the dissolution of 
the Union. First was the influence of the aristocracy, 



28 



including not only the nobility, but the army, navy, 
church, gentry, the educated, the rich, and the literary 
classes. The success of the American republic has 
been, for thirty years, the great argument used by 
English reformers against the English aristocracy. 
The dissolution of the American republic would 
destroy that argument, and give the aristocracy a lease 
of a hundred more years of life. " See," they could 
say, " a republic has no stability, because wanting in 
this aristocratic element. Keep us, and England is 
safe, not otherwise." Then came the manufacturers, 
who had committed England to the prmciple of free 
trade, and who needed markets for her goods. The 
dissolution of the Union would secure an open market 
at the South, and compel the North to reduce its 
tariff to the lowest terms. This motive was of im- 
mense weight. Finally, there was added the feeling 
in the heart of nearly every Englishman, that the 
Union Avas becoming a great and dangerous neighbor. 
They had been obliged to bear from us what they 
would not have borne from any other people, to 
concede to us what they would not have conceded to 
any other. This concession and endurance rankled in 
the English bosom. They felt as you would feel if 
you had a family for neighbors who were noisy, who 
came through your yard, overlooked your windows, 
and threatened the peace of your melon-patch. If 
you should hear, some day, that this family had quar- 
relled among themselves, and would probably be 



29 



divided and scattered, you woidd be glad of it. You 
would say, " Now, I shall have peace, and it will be 
better for them to be broken up ; they will cease to 
be a nuisance, and will become more respectable." 
These three influences ruled the action of England. 
But the other nation (as Count Gasparin calls it), in 
England, which is not an aristocracy, which is sin- 
cerely anti-slavery, which is humble, and voiceless, — 
the plebeian multitude, honest, strong, determined, — 
has always been on our side. Starving, withoul bread, 
in deepest want, it has clung to the northern cause, 
as the cause of justice and true democracy ; and now 
it begins, more and more to be felt in all the counsels 
of England, and I think England will not act against 
us in this war. 

But the principal thought which forces itself 
upon the mmd, is, that God is in this war. We 
cannot keep out of sight the Divine Providence, 
which is sure to punish evil — sure to put down 
the proud and raise the lowly — which judges 
nations, as men, by fixed and inevitable laws. For 
the sake of our prosperity, our union, and our 
peace, we consented, during long years, to what we 
ourselves knew perfectly was unjust and wrong. 
What was the natural consequence? The South 
came to believe that we cared for nothing but 
money. As long as we were willing to concede, 
again and again, principle, honor, conviction, for 
the sake of union, peace, and prosperity, they 



30 



believed, and with good reason, that for the sake 
of peace, prosperity, and union, we would concede 
every thing. If we had resisted at the first, we 
should never have come to this. 

But the great Power which presides over the 
world meant that we should do justice. He cares 
for all His children. There is with Him neither 
Jew nor Gentile, neither bond nor free, neither black 
nor white. So, refusing to do anything for the slave ; 
refusing to let the people go out of bondage ; plague 
upon plague has come upon us, until, at last, we 
have reached the darkness of Egypt and the death 
of the fii'st-born. And now, finally, we are driven 
to the point of emancipation, not because we wish 
to emancipate, but because we must. What we 
would not do for the sake of justice and humanity, 
we are compelled to do to save ourselves. We 
call on the negro, in oiu' extremity, to save us. 
It will be a very strange illustration of the ways 
of God if the poor ignorant negro, trampled under 
foot of all, rises to the work of saving the Ameri- 
can Union. " As a military necessity," says the 
president ; "As a military necessity," says General 
Butler. " Don't think we do it, because it is right," 
we say to mankind — " do not so misunderstand us ; 
we do it because we cannot help it." - But it must 
be done. All men of any sagacity, no matter what 
were their previous opinions, are fast coming to 
agree on this point. It must be done. The re- 



31 



bellion is slavery — and if we fight the rebellion 
we must fight slavery. General Butler says the 
slaves are sure to be free. Wendell Phillips, as 
an abolitionist, says his work is done. When the 
children of this world and the children of light are 
so emphatically agreed, I thmk that all between the 
two extremes, will come to a like conclusion. Gen- 
eral Butler took seven pro-slavery democratic col- 
onels with him to New Orleans, and they are all in 
favor of emancipation. Such is the logic of facts. 
The objections to negro soldiers are coming to an 
end very rapidly. The low motive of selfishness must 
help soon to accomplish this result. When it comes 
to drafting, and the question is whether we refuse to 
let negroes be soldiers, and so increase the chance of 
being drafted ourselves and having our sons drafted, 
I do not think there are many who will refuse to let 
them go. Col. Higginson, and Col. Montgomery, in 
South Carolina and Florida, have demonstrated that 
they make good soldiers. They take discipline well, 
are obedient, are imitative, have a great deal of the 
love of approbation, which is an important motive in 
war ; and as to courage, courage in a soldier after he 
has been disciplined, is a matter of course. Then 
they know the South ; are acquainted with the coun 
try; are used to labor and hardship; do not need 
half the equipage that white soldiers need, in march- 
ing ; and are not exposed so much to the diseases of 
southern climates. If the war goes on I expect to 



32 



see armies of negroes, all of whom will acquire self- 
respect as United-States soldiers, and inspire respect 
in others. The wives and children will stay at their 
homes ; the men will come and enlist ; and this will 
be the best education for liberty — the best kind of 
transition from slavery to freedom. 

People say, " what will you do with the negroes 
if you free them ? " Providence answers the ques- 
tion — make soldiers of them. Give the negro the 
opportunity he needs. This is a part of the solu- 
tion of the problem, and so we had better accept it. 
Another part of it is, to make Florida and Texas 
free States, and let the negro go there and work for 
wages ; or work on land of his own, raising cotton 
by free labor. Free labor will supersede slave labor 
in a few years, if you give it this trial. 

Another aspect of the war is its tendency to pro- 
duce a deeper and truer union between the States 
and people. It is often the tendency of prosperity 
to divide, and of adversity to unite. Those who 
have gone together through great trials are likely to 
be thoroughly united ; more so than those who have 
only enjoyed life in company. " Two young lovers 
lately wed," think that they love each other as 
much as is possible. They know nothing about 
it. They do not know how much deeper and richer 
the love will be which will come one day, when 
they shall have borne together common sorrows, 
gone through labors together, endured hardships 



33 



and made sacrifices for each other, watched by each 
other through long hours of sickness and pain, and 
dropped tears into the same grave on the little casket 
which holds the darling of their hearts. So is it 
also with nations. When prosperity has divided a 
nation by developing different interests and antago- 
nist activities, adversity unites it by common sacri- 
fices and common struggles. Superficial thinkers 
imagine that our Union was made by the Constitu- 
tion, and that those who made the Constitution made 
the Union. Superficial thinkers, — for what is a 
constitution but a piece of parchment, unless it 
expresses the wishes and intentions of the people ] 
Nothing is easier than to make a good constitution, — 
nothing harder than to have it accepted and set in 
motion, unless the people are ready for it. The 
South- American States have had as good or better 
constitutions than ours ; but their constitutions have 
not saved them from anarchy and civil war. The 
Revolutionary War made the people ready for the 
Federal Constitution, by making them really desu'e " a 
more perfect union." Their common struggles and 
sufferings, side by side, through eight years of war ; 
their common efforts to raise men and money ; " the 
bones of New-England's sons, fallen in the great 
struggle for independence, and mingled with the soil 
of every State, from Maine to Georgia," — this was the 
real basis of the Federal Union. And now the same 
causes will produce the same results. Massachusetts 



34 



men, fighting side by side with the men of Pennsyl- 
vania, for the defence of Kentucky ; men of Iowa and 
Wisconsin and Maine and Maryland, struggling for 
the possession of Richmond, or the opening of the 
Mississippi ; New York and New England, rescuing 
the loyal men of Texas and Western Virgmia with 
their own blood ; comforts sent from Boston to the 
bedside of the sick soldier of Missouri, in the hos- 
pitals of Tennessee. These are the things to unite a 
nation. The Union between the loyal States is 
today stronger than it has ever been. Never was 
there less danger than there is today, of the West 
separating from the East, or of New England's being 
left out in the cold. The war, like a burning fire, 
has fused the convictions and sentiments of the 
nation together; it has made abolitionists by the 
logic of facts, of men, who, two years ago, were 
bitterly pro-slavery ; it has made the semi-loyal 
loyal, or has driven them into open treason or rebel- 
lion. We may therefore say that the Union was 
never so strong as it is today. 

And even as regards the rebel States, perhaps 
it will be found that this war will have a tendency to 
prepare them for union with us on a firmer founda- 
tion than in the years that are past. If it destroys 
slavery, it will destroy the only cause of disunion. 
Slavery abolished and the slaveholders converted 
to emancipation, they will become one with the 
North in feeling and conviction. The fact that 



35 



we have fought together will not necessarily divide 
us. The people of England were as much united 
after their civil war as before. Two boys at 
school, long jealous of each other, often like each 
other better after they have had a trial of strength. 
The North and South have learned to respect 
each other's coiu'age and determination. We 
thought them braggarts — they thought us cowards. 
We have both found out that we were mistaken. 
There is, then, no reason for discouragement. 
We can always fall back on first principles, and 
say, "The Lord reigns." It never was more 
evident than now that the Lord reigns. He 
had waited long enough for us to do justly, — he 
could wait no longer. 

We have shown in this war the immense power 
of free institutions. We have improvised armies and 
extemporized navies. We have shown that a free 
and educated people need never have standing armies 
or great navies or forts ; that when she needs them 
she can make them all at once. America sprang 
from the ground, at the sound of the cannon fired at 
Fort Sumter, an armed man. Her common schools, 
which send armies of industry into the field in time 
of peace, sent armies of soldiers when necessary to 
the war. We supplied all deficiencies of organiza- 
tion by the power of voluntary action. 

Best of all, whatever else comes, emancipation has 
come. Whether the slaves are free or not, we our- 



36 



selves are free. Xo longer is slavery legal ; no 
longer are we bound to maintain it. That disgrace 
has passed away forever. Those who have fallen 
in this struggle have not fallen in vain. Blessed 
be God for their heroic lives and noble deaths. 



" Let it go or stay, so I wake to the liigher aims 
Of a land that has lost for a little her lust of gold, 
And love of a peace that was full of wrongs and shames 
Horrible, hateful, monstrous, not to be told; 
And hail once more the banner of battle unrolled. 
Though many an eye shall darken, and many weep, 
Yet God's first claims shall be wreaked on a giant liar. 
And many a darkness into light shall leap, 
And the hearts of tlie people beat with one desire; 
And noble thought be freer under the sun ; 
For the peace I deemed tio peace, is over and done 
In the blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire,'" 



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